THE BLACK MANOSPHERE NEEDS TO KNOW THAT THE REVOLUTION WON'T BE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

12:57 PM 7/20/2026 Mon

I've just gotten finished having a gut wrenchingly honest conversation via Facebook's Direct Messenger with a brother who I will not name, about some very deep concerns he's had about the Black Manosphere as it exists online for quite some time now. Among many other things, he lamented over how the space seems to have become a haven for some deeply maladjusted guys, brothers with deep-seated problems and worldviews, often egged on by others who hold themselves and are often seen as elder statesmen figures bent on selling a warped vision of the world. It's all been very depressing for this brother, to the point that he no longer wants to be a part of the online Black Manosphere community, or associated with it. We talked for well over an hour and he's said things that needed to be said - and that sound all too familiar to me. 

The reason why I say that is because it was as if I was listening to myself for the past over an hour. The brother in question was saying the exact same things I said three years back in 2023 - that the Black Manosphere, for all its very real talent and potential, also has very real challenges that it needs to address, because its idiosyncrasies causes it to self-destruct. And if you doubt me, go back and see it in black and white for yourself: 

Afterwords: Thoughts On My Interview With Ace Metaphor
https://blackmanosphere.com/blogs/news/afterwords-thoughts-on-my-interview-with-ace-metaphor

WHAT IS THE PROFILE OF A BLACK MANOSPHERIAN?
https://blackmanosphere.com/blogs/news/what-is-the-profile-of-a-black-manospherian

A YEAR END OPEN LETTER TO REG THE BAD GUY, SITH LORD OF BLACK YOUTUBE
https://blackmanosphere.com/blogs/news/a-year-end-open-letter-to-reg-the-bad-guy-sith-lord-of-black-youtube

Exactly what am I talking about? Let's count the ways - again, per the concerns of the brother who contacted me this morning and who has himself been in the space online for well over a decade: 

1. The Black Manosphere, as it is known and exists online, is forever online. And that is a big part of the problem. While the Black Manosphere isn't unique in this regard, the fact remains that social media has, deliberately or otherwise, created something of a safe haven for people to essentially escape their real world lives and exist in an online virtual one - where they can adopt another persona, nurture proclivities and grievances, and perhaps most of all, find others of like mind. Some say that people put on a mask when online, but I say it's the other way around: People put on a mask when out in real time. It's online that they show their true selves, much like Bruce Wayne in "Batman Begins". Toward the end of the movie, with Wayne Manor burned down and reduced to smoldering rubble, Bruce Wayne confers with childhood friend Rachel Dawes. It's clear that Wayne has feelings for Dawes, but when she discovers his other life as the Batman, she declines - saying that now the criminal underworld of Gotham knows his true face, that of the Batman. Bruce Wayne, is the mask. I think that for many people, far more than we're willing to admit, they too are wearing a polite mask in real life real time public; it's when they go online that they show their true selves, their true faces.  

2. Being forever online has actually hampered the Black Manosphere's growth. Back when I helped to create the Black Manosphere in the summer of 2015, there was a very real need for rank and rile brothers to have a place to have the kinds of conversations that were increasingly becoming sparse and untenable in real time. Sure, there was the venerated Black barbershop, but with the increasingly unisex trend taking hold of adjoining barbershops with hair and beauty salons, having places to truly talk shop were running dry. Social media was really getting off the ground as we know it today - Facebook, Instagram, back then Twitter and most especially YouTube - what would become both the Black Manosphere's stronghold and millstone around its neck - and these platforms gave Black men who felt lost, dazed and confused by the rapidly changing world as it related to Black women among other things, a very real place to gather, talk shop and exchange information. 

And for a good long minute, that was a good thing. But things needed to change - and it did...

3. Kevin Samuels. That name alone changed everything. The Black Manosphere, overnight, went from a virtual barbershop before the unisex makeover, to a highly polished and coiffed media machine with Kevin leading the way. His was a professional, C-suite level Powerpoint presentation of a show night in and night out for almost three years straight, from the spring of 2020 until the spring of 2022 - and not all of the Black Manosphere party faithful were on board. While some of the louder and better known voices of the period were heard charging Kevin with carpetbagging and intellectual property theft (all of which were specious claims, proofed by the fact that no vigorous lawsuits were launched in defense of these guys' oh so precious "property"), the more lower level content creators and chatroom guys were outraged that Kevin had the gall to suggest that looks actually matter, that if you wanted to get ahead in life looking the part helped, and that making money and appealing to the ladies was actually a good thing. Long before many aggrieved Black women started calling him "kitten heels" there were quite a few bros in the Black Manosphere space trying to accuse Kevin of "being gay" simply for looking neat, tidy, speaking the King's English and having more than a working knowledge of cologne. Indeed and to this very day it is not at all unusual to still hear grumbling from what I call the dark corners of the Black Manosphere, still nursing butthurt over Kevin Black men to get their acts together. It was and remains a very real and persistent problem, lowkey. 

4. The Black Manosphere (online) has become a magnet for all the wrong kinds and types of Black men. Not because they're Black men, and not because they're Black men with various personal, relational, or economic problems - we all have and will face those to varying degrees, and these problems are NOT insurmountable - but because these are the Black men who refuse to address their problems. For them, the Black Manosphere online isn't a place to get better - with women, with their mental health, with their finances, with their purpose and direction in life, with their physical health and fitness - but rather, and in truth, a place for them to nurse long held grievances, ruminate over real and perceived sleights, and trauma bond with fellow lost souls - all in the name of truth telling and having a line on insights that polite, normie society can't or won't bring themselves to admit in the light of day. Of course, there are very real things that are true along these lines - I have made that case many times over the past few years alone. But that doesn't change the fact that the space - again, as it exists online - is beginning to do more harm than good to its denizens. 

This is because the very nature and downsides of social media, coupled with the challenges many of these brothers face, combine to create a toxic brew of an echo chamber - one that keeps the brothers frozen in the amber of the 2010s, when Google Hangouts predated YouTube's purpose built live streaming capability of the pandemic days. 

5. The real Black Manosphere carpetbaggers. These are guys who have just enough social media savvy, natural charisma and talent, to create de facto brands to garner an audience - a paying one. Making money through social media isn't a bad thing at all, but when you do it making money by making grandiose claims of making brothers better and clearly have failed to produce - and the only one who is getting better is you - then yeah, that IS a problem. It's not all of the guys cashing in on the space - in point of fact the ones who are making more than beer money are fewer than a double digit figure - but they are real and they are actively contributing to the continued backsliding of the space from where it could be to where it is now: associated with petty conmen and grifters. There, I said it...

6. The Black Manosphere online peddles too much in extremes. Again, this isn't unique to the Black Manosphere online - social media overall caters to the extreme. In fact, the more extreme you are, the more likely you are to do well on social media. Outrage, emotional outbursts, getting a rise out of someone and lots of conflict, all are the life's blood of social media. Nuanced, sober and thoughtful hot takes, simply don't garner attention, gain traction and go viral - and the social media game is ALL about virality. As a result, the Black Manosphere tends to lean towards those who are, well, extreme - who take extreme positions and who state them in absolute terms. For people looking "just for entertainment" and in small doses, it's not a big deal. But for the kinds of brothers who tend to latch on to the online Black Manosphere space, today in 2026 - not 2016, mind you - this can be serious. Even dangerous. I am not kidding. 

The antidote to all of this of course, is the Black Manosphere Conclave - the annual gathering of brothers from around the world united in the simple but profound idea of being excellent in all things. We got our start in late 2021 and have operated annually ever since. And while the Black Manosphere online has started to visibly whither on the vine, the Black Manosphere Conclave has thrived. 

It's thrived for a very simple reason that its online variant out of which it grew has not: Community. That word gets tossed around a lot in social media parlance, but I don't think a true, real community can ever truly happen online. At best, it can be a cheap substitute. An actual community exists in real time, with real people, together united in a singular purpose. A community is a physical, ideological, philosophical place where people who are of like mind, live, work and play together. A community helps each other in times of need, celebrates each others' wins, and commiserates with each other's losses. A real community grows; it doesn't stagnate or gets stuck in the past. When the Black Manosphere Conclave started out it had barely fifty brothers coming out to join us. Last year, it was upwards of 500. And it continues to grow. 

That's because, along the way, we learned a number of things: that brothers DO want to improve their lives. That they DO want to address longstanding personal concerns. And that they DO want to make money - and perhaps most importantly, they DO want relationships, family, and love. Five brothers have done just that in the past three years alone. That may not sound like much coming out of some 500 brothers last year alone; but consider this: How many brothers in and around the Black Manosphere online have gotten married - or even in a long term committed relationship that you can point at? To ask the question, is to answer it. 

As the pandemic began to set in for the long haul in the spring of 2021, it became increasingly clear to me back then that the Black Manosphere as it was then known's days were numbered. Something had to change, although I wasn't quite sure what. Kevin was getting off the ground in a big way, and my very first book, aptly named "The Book of Obsidian: A Manual for the 21st Century Black American Gentleman" was starting to make waves - but I still had no idea how the Black Manosphere online, that I helped to create and build, would take things to the next level. That would happen in the fall of that year, with a phone call from TheoWAF, veteran Big Tech guy and Chief Technology Officer for the Black Manosphere Conclave today. He had a crazy idea: To take all that he had learned from working all over the world - like one of Tokyo's biggest banks in their IT department - and teach it directly to as many Black men as he could. Along the way, he wanted to wed that personal, hands on Big Tech instruction with solid Red Pill principles - the kind that kept him from eating a pistol. That crazy idea  along with other bits and pieces we've bolted on that have become the "policies and procedures" of the Black Manosphere Conclave today - have proven amazingly effective. 

It's time for brothers to drastically reduce their online social media consumption - that includes the Black Manosphere online - and it's time for brothers to plug into real world communities, like the Black Manosphere Conclave. We're going to be gathering for our sixth annual conclave in Las Vegas - I hope to see you all there. 

And to that brother I talked to this morning: Thank you, man. I really needed to hear that. 

Sincerely,
Mumia Obsidian Ali
Black Manosphere Conclave
www.blackmanosphere.com